Untitled. U.S. Healthcare Rankings - Not Good! Have you ever wondered where the United States ranks with other countries in the world for life expectancy? You might guess it would be in the top 10. Wrong! Top 20? Nope. Top 30? No way. Looking at the infant mortality rate, we find that 44 other countries have a lower rate. In the United states, we spend more on health care per person than any other country in the world. The United States spends more on medical care per person than any country, yet life expectancy is shorter than in most other developed nations and many developing ones. To see the difference very clearly, take a look at this chart. Here is some more sobering information. An Ill-Conceived Health-Care Ranking. WHO's Fooling Who? The World Health Organization's Problematic Ranking of Health Care Systems | Glen Whitman | Cato Institute: Briefing Paper.
The World Health Report 2000, prepared by the World Health Organization, presented performance rankings of 191 nations’ health care systems. These rankings have been widely cited in public debates about health care, particularly by those interested in reforming the U.S. health care system to resemble more closely those of other countries. Michael Moore, for instance, famously stated in his film SiCKO that the United States placed only 37th in the WHO report. CNN.com, in verifying Moore’s claim, noted that France and Canada both placed in the top 10. Those who cite the WHO rankings typically present them as an objective measure of the relative performance of national health care systems. They are not. The WHO rankings depend crucially on a number of underlying assumptions— some of them logically incoherent, some characterized by substantial uncertainty, and some rooted in ideological beliefs and values that not everyone shares.